


In Your Eyes

by Malmignatte



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Drones And Explosions And Tech Oh My!, Gen, Harley's A Little Shit, I haven't written a completed fic in years someone send advil, M/M, Mixed POV, Peter is Not Impressed, Superhero Harley Keener, Tony is Exasperated, but also amused, meet ugly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-01-15 10:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malmignatte/pseuds/Malmignatte
Summary: Someone's blowing up drones in Spider-Man's face for the YouTube clicks, there's a bratty new hero in town, and Central Park isn't prime real estate for web-slinging.Aka. Parker Luck, for the most part, is bad luck (sometimes it's okay, though).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written anything in years. 
> 
> I really wanted to write a superhero!Harley AU, so I'm shamelessly indulging myself. Hoping to finish this up before Endgame but, well, we'll have to see. 
> 
> Unbeta'd because I'm Nervous (tm).

Peter Parker would firmly like to lodge a formal complaint with the local government of Queens for leaving far too many rooftops unmonitored.

Sure, he’s seen the billboards, and he’d thought nothing of them. Just some kid trying to hit it big on YouTube, to be the next JennaMarbles or -- whatever. It wasn’t meant to escalate. He’d been teased and taunted into way worse things. Or so he’d thought.

Capture The Flag: Spiderman Edition (there was a hyphen, damn it!) was something he’d thought was a marketing ploy by the new Jake Paul. It had been poorly photoshopped and rendered onto three billboards around the city (who had that kind of money? In New York? Oh, wait, Mister Stark, yeah. But what _normal_ person had that kind of money?), and its ‘release day’ was today. So, sure, he’d been expecting to log onto his computer this morning while on his way to the tower and maybe watch a compilation video. Instead, there had been a livestream announcing that a trigger to _disarm_ a bomb was on a drone that was currently flying around New York City.

So, that was his life. Peter Parker, playing capture the flag. With a girl in a morph suit. He wants to shove his face into his gloved palms but, alas, there was no time for such theatrics.

Because, you know, bomb.

Oh! Icing on the cake?

There are decoys. Which explode. Because apparently Spider-Man being hit in the face by explosives is great clickbait for the user Screwball -- and the climbing subscriber count was proof.

So far, he’s managed to detonate three of the airborn mini-bombs, and he’s had one blow up in  his face, dusting his mask black and grey on top of the red. That’s just life when you’re Spider-Man and Tony Stark won’t pick up his fuc-- fu-reaking phone.

The good news is that there’s only one drone left -- at least, anticipating that Screwball had been truthful in her accounting of the plan -- which means that he’s chasing the trigger. Of course it’s the last one; typical Parker Luck. Currently, the drone is racing through the air in the city, but there’s a reason why Spider-Man’s current situation is not ideal: they’re taking a dangerous dive toward Central Park. A lovely place! Really beautiful! Just… No tall buildings to swing off. Trees, sure, but he ends up having to land on his feet and sprint, which isn’t ideal.

“Spider-Man!”

Peter’s head whips around to the voice.

“Assist!” It’s like someone is announcing their actions in a superhero cartoon, but he can’t exactly quip now, not when Karen is informing him of a projectile in the air. He assumes, at first, that it’s some part of Screwball’s game, except that voice was very definitely male and very Not New York.

He spots something that looks like an arrow rise into the air, holding for a moment in suspension before it drops down, and then it all kind of clicks. Ooh, an _assist?_ Peter aims his web up toward it and pulls as hard as he can, launching himself into the air just as a parachute opens on the projectile. Huh. Cool. It gives him the necessary boost to keep his momentum, at the very least, and surprisingly doesn’t blow up in his face (the amount of times that has happened is embarrassingly numerous).

Peter can’t afford to glance back at whomever helped, though, because he’s got Spider-Manning to do  and, honestly, he’s got a list of current threats. It starts with bomb, and ‘parachute arrow’ is only halfway down, probably not even as high priority as his AP biology homework.

Whatever.

Point is! He’s got his hands on the drone finally, and he’s dragging it down to the ground, webs stopping the propellers until he’s on two feet and crouching in the middle of central park with a kill switch to a bomb held against his chest. This is fine.

His first course of action is to flip the switch, because he’s not exactly thinking of what could happen if it _isn’t_ a kill switch, and then pull the power module out of the drone to stop the engine from making a growingly more distressed sound as the impellers fight to against the web and it slowly starts to overheat. That wouldn’t be good, it was far from ideal, at the very least, especially because he wanted to know exactly where it was coming from. There was no way that this drone was _normal._ It flew too fast, and he’d been travelling far too far around the city for it to be anything consumer-level.

“Man, that don’t look like any drone I ever saw.”

The voice catches him off guard and Peter’s head snaps up to see a stranger approaching. His first question is: are those heelies? Because he doesn’t look to really be walking along the path. The fact that he rocks forward when reaching the grass to jog over confirms that, yes, this person is wearing electronic heelies. Peter really fucking wants a pair, thank you.

The second is that when he looks up past the cargo pants and shirt, he notices what looks to be a series of mechanics wrapped around the stranger’s upper body, one half white and the other orange, gloving both of his hands and wrapping around his shoulders with what must be a power unit strapped to his upper back.

The third? Ridiculous orange-tinted goggles resting on a grinning face and ridiculously curly dirty blond hair. It’s… somehow a look.

One he either loves or hates, but he has to give props for bold fashion choices and accessories.

“Hey, uh, was that you earlier? With the… Arrow?” Peter doesn’t see a bow, and actually takes the time to look for one, quietly hoping that Karen is recording -- who’s he kidding, she always is -- so that he can analyze the other later. That’s kind of important, after all, since the kid(?) is either not from around here, or someone has a worse fake accent than Peter does when he speaks with the mask off.

“It’s a handle, actually,” the stranger offers, coming closer to crouch opposite him, wasting no time in getting his hands all over the drone and turning it over, taking advantage of the masked hero’s surprise to pull it close to him while his brow furrows in thought. There’s a strange quirk to his lips as he looks around, tinkering, and the orange side of his upper-body armor spreads out, expands, prongs that aren’t unreminiscent of Dum-E and U -- just smaller -- prying at a panel on the drone.

Peter’s not sure if he’s intimidated or intrigued.

He clears his throat, reaching to grab the drone back and looking comically surprised in the way that the whites of his mask widen in surprise when it’s tugged from his reach. All the while, the other hasn’t taken his eyes off the tech in front of him, but now his bottom lip is between his teeth, and his head is angled in a way that Peter can now notice that part of his goggles have magnification lenses.

“Uh, okay,” he’s not used to people yanking dangerous, illegal weaponry away from him without them being a threat, “well thanks for the assist, but I should probably be taking that, y’know, so that I can look it over in my lab.”

The stranger hums in the back of his throat, but makes no move to hand it over. “Aw, c’mon Spidey, ya don’t think we could share? This is gonna be my first superhero work in New York City, and I wanna take it back to my lab. What was happenin’, anyway? You look like ya got too close to an exhaust pipe.” Pointedly, he waves the white-gloved hand in the direction of Peter’s face.

Sputtering, he brought up his hands and rubbed the ash from his mask as best he could, but he knew that it was most likely just going to be worked deeper into the fabric that he’d have to wash anyway, and that it would probably push through into his skin if he wasn’t careful, so Peter let out a defeated sigh.

“There were other bombs,” he explains after a beat, “and I really do need to get back to analyze it...”

Finally, the other looks up and Peter almost wants to sigh, but even when the drone is pushed in his direction and Peter reaches for it, he snatches it away from his gloved hands. “Nuh-uh, I want you to tell me somethin’ first. Your lenses, you’d be able to zoom in and brighten something for me, wouldn’t cha?” he demands, holding the drone over his shoulder. Peter has to assume that the tech covering his upper body is helping to support it, because it’s a four foot drone and not exactly light. He’s learned to assume that it’s unlike everyone with advanced mechanics actually have super powers.

Nodding slowly, Peter tilts his head, raises a brow (even though it wouldn’t be able to be seen behind the mask). “Sure, yeah,” he replies, though he’s not sure where they’re going on this subject. Peter just wants the drone, a shower, and a whole pizza all to himself.

“Can ya read this for me, then?” Pushed directly underneath Peter’s nose is the drone with the removed panel, and there is, indeed, black engraved writing on the black interior, something that definitely wouldn’t be the easiest thing to read without his enhanced vision and Karen’s ability to further that.

 

So he leans in, the lenses widen to let more light in, he gets in close --

 

Uh-oh, Spidey-senses.

 

A fucking flash bomb goes off right in front of his face, right in his field of vision, and Peter lets out an unholy noise as he topples onto his ass, immediately rendered blind. Karen immediately shuts down the lenses of his mask to save his eyes from taking in the light of the sky he’s now suddenly faced with from where he’d dropped onto his back, and she’s telling him to breathe.

 

All Peter can focus on is the motherfucker who thinks that orange goggles are a fashion accessory, and how _pissed off_ he is.

 

Also how pissed off Mister Stark will be when he has to admit that he let some kid wearing heelies and drawling out his words in a thick southern accent get away with the main drone that Screwball had been using. The only one that hadn’t been detonating.

And that, my friends, is Parker Luck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley's arrival in New York. 
> 
> It goes about as well as you think it would, and probably better than Harley ever did. 
> 
> Unbeta'd again.

It’s been over twenty hours since he first left Tennessee. Twenty long hours on the bus with a few pit stops to change drivers, and several naps to pass the time. His notebook is filled up and his third pen has ran out of ink by the time the city’s massive high-rise comes into view. It’s amazing, it’s incredible, but there are so many better things deeper in the heart of the city.

Harley thanks the bus driver as he sling his backpack over one shoulder and grabbed an extra duffle he’d stowed undercarriage, grinning broadly as he disembarks. The city stinks, it isn’t like Rosehill. He’s fairly sure he spots three separate rats scurrying down into the sewer drains while various travellers start to split off into different threads of direction, some transferring to more rural coaches, others hailing cabs from the line that mill around the station like vultures ready to swoop in and free the out of towners of some cash.

He goes with the vultures, gracelessly flopping into the back seat of an awaiting cab, all limbs and messy blond curls.

“Where to, kid?”

“Avengers Tower, please,” Harley’s accent drawls a little, and he rummages through his duffle, while ignoring the answering scoff that he gets from the driver. Teen from Tennessee; what business does he have there? That must be the thought process, right?

He smoothes out the band shirt he’s wearing and attempts to fix up the ratty hoodie he has on top, next heading to tame the mop on top of his head, but that’s quickly forgotten. Instead, he damn-near plasters his face to the window to his side and stares up at the skyscrapers with wonder in his eyes. There’s a sense of vertigo that washes over him, making it feel as though he’ll topple at any given moment, but it’s overpowered by the hunger he feels for the big apple.

Harley _never_ wants to leave.

Movement amongst the skyscrapers catches his eye, and this time his nose does, in fact, smush up against the glass and his breath fogs it slightly when he catches sight of the iconic red and blue blur flashing through the skies. There’s something else there too, but he’s too far away to really make out what, or who, it is. Still, Harley watches; transfixed.

“Ya’ll see that a lot ‘round here?” he asks, the cab driver, leaning toward the center of the back seat to catch his eyes, one hand innocently pointing at the battle taking place in the distance. There’s only a grunt in response, but it still has him grinning, “that’s so badass.”

His attention goes back onto the fight -- he thinks that it’s a fight -- while the city traffic slows their journey. They’re only crawling when Spider-Man is honestly go god slammed by an explosion into one of the buildings to their right, but he doesn’t slide from the shattered concrete, somehow holding on with his hands and feet, even as his head bobs unsteadily like a drunk’s.

“Know what? Here’s good, actually!” It’s not like they’re making much progress while they have a super-battle going on right in front of them. Harley looks to the meter and fishes out a handful of crumpled bills from his pocket, plus a tip, which he hands through the partition. “Thanks, man. Have a good day! Don’t get webbed, or something,” the teen cheers, tapping his forehead in a two fingered salute before sliding out of the back seat with both of his bags.

By the time he’s out of the cab, Spider-Man is gone from the building, but it’s not hard to follow the trail of webs on foot and at a jog.

Now, Harley’s always had a thing for the heroes of New York, and Spider-Man isn’t any different. Actually, he may be a favourite, second only to The Mechanic. It’s just that, well, sometimes it looks like the pint-sized hero (they’re probably the same height, maybe? Spidey simply looks tiny in the unforgivingly tight suit, compared to the other Avengers) takes on more than he can handle. From the flash of an explosion he can see, it looks like that’s _exactly_ what has happening.

It’s not a good look.

He dumps his duffle by the side of a store with gaudy neon lights, somewhere easily identifiable, and hidden more or less behind a dumpster and an old pallet crate which he uses to cover it after he’s stuffed his hoodie inside and shouldered the strap of his orange backpack.

Maybe it’s the fact that Tony Stark is his mentor (it’s definitely that), but he presses his fingers along the pack’s straps and it’s a classic suit up. There’s a whir of mechanics as bright orange spreads down one arm and bright white down another. He shakes out his wrist, where several round cylinders are whirring and spins them around with his orange-gloved hand, slapping down on one of them. Each shoulder piece is like a pauldron, and the straps of the pack connect in front of his chest and secure into a braced position. From behind him, a pair of goggles are flicked over his face by bright orange appendages.

Oh yeah, he feels like a total badass.

Maybe it’s a little immature, but he taps one foot against another and the wheels in the bottom of his shoes boost him up a fraction and then steer through the alleyways until he breaks free onto the sidewalks and moves through to Central Park.

It’s a credit to how crazy New York is that no one really looks at him sideways.

The drone’s climbing through the air, but Spider-Man… Well, he isn’t.

Kinda makes sense; there’s fuck all but trees and the webslinger can’t fly. Unfortunate; Harley would love to have a word with whomever was working on that suit, because flight? Would be awesome! Maybe he can convince Tony to work on both of their superhero identities. He’s already got a spiel prepared for why he should be able to access the blueprints of the thrusters to combine into his own.

Okay, all of those thoughts aside…

There’s a drone in the air, and he can only assume that that’s what Spider-Man is going for, except that said bug-hybrid is failing to gain any height while only being able to web off the trees in Central Park.

Harley comes to a stop and anchors himself, popping out the cylinders on his arm once more and selecting one with a green rim around it, holding his arm into the air and sticking his tongue out from between his lips while aiming.

“Spider-Man!” he calls out for attention, before figuring it’s probably best to announce his intentions as he fires into the air, “assist!”

The handle mechanism had always been meant to stop people (him) from falling, but he uses his other hand to flick off the cord that would have been sent with the triangular shaped brace and its attached parachute. He wasn’t exactly looking to be launched into the air, after all.

Reeling the cable back in, Harley couldn’t help but look on in a little bit of awe when Spider-Man brought down the drone to the ground, racing over and sliding onto the tips of his feet until the heels could retract back in, almost falling over himself to look at the drone that the hero had.

If he snatches it, it’s because he’s excited, and also because, well, he kinda has something to prove.

He looks at it, the bright orange tech coming from his arm to help him disassemble one of the most obvious parts so that he can look at the inner workings when Spider-Man tries to take it back. Harley can’t have that, so he takes the drone back. Again. And again. And -- does this guy ever give up? The answer is no; he’s seen the videos.  
  


It’s an asshole move. He knows it’s an asshole move.

 

No one has ever accused him of being anything more.

 

“Can ya read this for me, then?”

 

And then he purposefully blinds Spider-Man. (Temporarily).

 

While the hero struggles, Harley grabs the drone and makes a mad dash back onto the pavement. The electric heeleys -- he’s taken to calling them zoomies, but it’s a work in progress -- whir as they carry him and his bounty away from an undoubtedly temporarily blinded Spider-Man. Not his greatest of moments, but Tony is going to be _so impressed_ when he brings back a drone stacked with stolen parts and a remote reverse-detonation device _and_ learns that he wrestled it off Spider-Man.

On his way back to the alley, he almost picks up the wrong back, before realising that his backpack is on his shoulders. Huh; weird. How many people are leaving their shit around in alleys these days? Probably a homeless person, or maybe the remnants of a smoke session that got a little heavy and resulted in the typical stoner brain-fart. He didn’t hang around long enough to properly investigate the pack, instead heading to return his own bag, white and orange folding back into his own pack while he yanked his hoodie back on.

Now, though? Well, he’d kinda wasted his money on the first cab by telling them to keep the change, so that meant he’d be heading toward the tower on foot. It wasn’t so bad; he’s a country boy, used to manual labor, used to walking or kick starting pain in the ass tractors he didn’t have _time_ to look after. There are more important things.

Setting off on foot, Harley smooths out his hair, grabs a hotdog, takes a photo with someone painted like the Statue of Liberty and ducks away before they can ask for money, and eyes the skyline to work out the best route to the tower.

 

It takes a stupid amount of time to get there -- mainly because he takes photos that he sends back to his sister and friends in Tennessee -- but eventually he stands in front of the glass doors and grins. Keen blue eyes search for the cameras, and he raises a hand. “FRIDAY, right? Hey sweetheart,” he greets, stepping through the doors as they open.

It’s not too surprising that his phone lights up, prompting him to put his headphones in so that he can talk directly to the AI, whose sass could give him a run for his money.

“Can’t believe you have a coffee shop _inside_ the tower. Oh shit, hey -- wire me some money?” Harley asks as something catches his eye in the display of the stand where employees are grabbing snacks and fuel.

Two minutes later sees him in a private elevator, chatting away charmingly with FRIDAY as he heads down toward the alley, a brown paper bag in one hand and the drone tucked underneath the other arm.

  


“What’s up, old man?” is the first thing that Harley says as he practically jumps out of the elevator, leaning back onto his heels to creep over the concrete floor of the lab, only to stop when Dum-E and U chirp at him, laughing and grinning at them brightly.

“You’re late. What kept you? I thought we talked about this. Why are you always letting me down?” comes a familiar voice, and Harley’s response is to throw the brown paper bag at Tony’s head from where he’s bent over a project.

“Got you your sandwich.”

“Oh, finally,” he looks up, spinning around after fishing the bag from where it had fallen on his desk, raising a brow at the logo on the bag. “And let me guess, you got FRIDAY to funnel the funds into your bank account?”

Harley rolls his eyes, strolling forward, hefting the drone to better balance it out in his arms. “What, you think I’d spend my hard earned money on you? I already saved your ass, and sent you badass blueprints.”

“And without my tech funding your little workshop, you wouldn’t have been able to make said blueprints,” Tony pointed the end of his pen at Harley, raising his other brow, even as he fished out the tuna sandwich from its bag.

Shrugging, the blond sat on one of the rails that lead down a ramp, sliding along it until he had to jump off. “Then I guess I’d just have to take Oscorp’s internship offer,” Harley replied, dropping the drone down onto the desk beside whatever Tony had been working on.

“You would never. And what the hell is this? I’m not here to look at your science fair project you know. Or rather, _you’re_ not here for me to look at it,” regardless of what he said, Tony was already picking it up and furrowing his brow, shoving his pen between his teeth so that he could hold it with both hands and turn it around in order to get a better view of the mechanisms and functions of the craft.

Harley plants both of his hands on the edge of the desk, “Dunno, I kinda intercepted it,” he informs, tapping the toe of one foot against the ground as he looks at it, reaching behind his shoulders to disconnect his goggles from the compact unit strapped to his back so that he can get a closer look in the better light.

“Boss, Peter is heading to the labs,” FRIDAY’s voice rings out overhead, while Harley has already started to look at the design mechanisms of the drone.

“Oh, send him in,” Tony dismisses with a wave of his hand toward the ceiling.

“Boss --”

“It’s fine, FRIDAY. He can come down.”

Harley doesn’t even notice, or care, he’s far more interested in detaching the flight mechanism of the drone so that he could look at it, straightening up to hold it to the light above him and look through the magnification lense of his goggles in order to examine it better.

“Oh my _god,_ Mister Stark,” comes a voice from around the corner where the door to the lab is.

“You will not _believe_ the day  I’ve had. First, I’m put up against the female Jake Paul, but with bombs, and _drones,_ and she can’t even get my name right, and _then --_ then! Then this _hick_ comes in, looking like he’s gonna help but, seriously? I’m _still_ seeing stars? He flashbanged me! Over a drone!”

Spider-Man has lost his mask at some point, his hands pressed to his eyes in frustration as he wandered down the ramp that Harley had slid along not even fifteen minutes prior.

Harley covers his mouth for a moment, but he knows that Tony is staring at him in disbelief.

“Well,” he drawls, twisting around, “Tony, you didn’t tell me that you worked with Spider-Man, and you sure as hell didn’t tell me that he’s one fine slice of pie,” Harley coos, only to be met with the sudden reveal of very, very furious brown eyes.

It’s a flash of movement, but he finds himself pressed against the wall of the lab, red-webbed gloves buried into his hoodie and frustratedly knit brows glowering up at him. “What the hell? What were you thinking?! You have no idea what you were doing! You--” it looked like Spider-Man was attempting to push him up the wall, but Harley stands at six feet, taller than both other current occupants of the lab.

When there’s a push for his body to be raised -- oh, right, super strength -- it was met by two dual clanks. Behind Harley, an orange three-footed claw has snapped into the wall to keep him down, and over his left shoulder, a mechanical arm has pinched the back of the suit.

Instead of Harley being raised off the ground, Spider-Man is lifted almost a foot from it; it clearly catches him off guard.

“Sorry darl’,” Harley drawls, “you’re gonna have to _hurt me_ if you want me to put ya down, so get a cooler and chill for a sec. If anyone’s to blame,” the orange claw slowly, carefully, lowers Spider-Man to the ground, “it’s Tony. He should’ve given  us a heads up.”   


Spider-Man doesn’t look impressed.

 

Tony at least has a moment of brief guilt before he steels his expression into something that’s apparently meant to be serious.

 

Harley laughs.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony doesn’t know when he started adopting wayward teenagers. 

Okay, wait, scratch that. That’s a lie. He _knows_ , because he remembers what he sent Harley when he’d turned thirteen, and all he’d wanted was a laptop and a signal booster that would work better to talk to Tony with than their monthly scheduled calls (every second tuesday of the month, 4PM, JARVIS made sure he had no excuse not to answer). It had taken three years for Harley to sheepishly mention that a can of Dr. Pepper had been responsible for his laptop’s untimely demise and that his sister had taken his tablet. It was the first time he’d actively _asked_ for something too.

Sure, Harley has always been sass in a paper bag, but he’s never been needy, nor greedy. 

So, yeah. He’d adopted a ten year-old, kinda, and then that ten year-old had turned thirteen, and with that coming of age right had come a new laptop linked up with Stark’s own sprawling network and an ATV quad bike. 

Peter doesn’t take much time to come along after that, either. It’s impossible for Tony to not be keeping an eye on the city. To be keeping an eye on everything, really. Tony doesn’t have a strict base of operations, not after New York. He spends time in Stark Industries Headquarters in California, he travels, he comes back to New York, signs paperwork, examines locations, and discovers Spider-Man. 

At first, he’s worried that Spider-Man is a threat, but it soon becomes clear -- as he drops into traffic to stop a car from T-boning a bus, as common criminals are found webbed to one wall with their weapons webbed to another, as the blue and red pint-sized person scales a building to scoop a toddler away from the teetering edge of a balcony -- that this person isn’t a threat. 

It becomes more clear how little of a threat he is when Tony first hears his audio caught on camera of a guy leaving a shoe store in a sprint followed by a line of the (now familiar, Tony had taken samples to his lab) gossamer that the kid had been so fond of using, and a less literal line of _Damn, Daniel._

Maybe Harley had shown him that video at some point; Tony has erased Vines from his memory. 

Point is; it became very clear that the Spider-Man was a kid. Maybe around Harley’s age. He still is a kid, just a little bigger. 

And it’s not like he wasn’t going through his own shit, trying to patch things together, trying to make up for what had happened, what _he_ had done. The creation of Ultron had been a complete failure, Tony should had had contingency plans. His contingency plans usually have contingency plans. Maybe others were involved. Maybe he never has, and never will care. 

One person’s kid died because of him. More than one person’s. And how many had died before that? 

So he uses traffic cameras, surveillance footage, photos, and geolocation. He creates a map of Spider-Man, and he finds Peter Parker. 

Peter Parker is just a teen. It takes approximately thirty seconds after locating his apartment address and browsing through the list of occupants to figure out that he’s fourteen, he goes to Midtown High (a STEM feeder school, on a full ride scholarship), and that there’s science in his blood. Probably some other stuff as well, given that the kid in the yearbook photos with glasses and spots all over his face looks like he couldn’t lift a toothpick, let alone a car. 

So he protects him. He makes a suit, he folds him into the Avengers, and he offers oversight. Oversight because Tony believes it’s important, because he knows that if he doesn’t interfere that this kid is going to get himself killed in flannel pajamas and if he doesn’t act, it will be on him. 

Peter lives in Queens, and Tony makes a habit of speaking to him regularly -- more regularly than his monthly calls, but that’s because he’s _right there._ Tony builds the compound in upstate New York. It’s far away from other buildings, just in case someone attacks. There will be no more deaths on his hands. 

Still, the tower stands and they flit back and forth between that. He drags Peter out of one issue and then has to respond to a flurry of messages from Harley, who is asking how to create the most solid hinges that can rotate entirely around, and the best way to create a polymer that can be applied to them if they become loose for a quick-fix. 

It’s definitely time for them to meet. 

Not his best plan; you don’t put two exhausting, rebellious, troublesome seventeen year-olds in the same city and not expect them to find each other. 

He kinda forgets that he’s been more hands-off with Harley, though. And then he also kinda forgets that, for Peter, his identity is a _big thing._

Whoops! 

Look. No one, least of all Tony Stark, would claim that Tony Stark is infallible. 

So he ignores FRIDAY, and has Peter come in, and he doesn’t think, for a second, about:

 

  1. The fact that Peter often swings to the tower in his suit
  2. The fact that Harley has somehow come in with a drone sporting tech beyond consumer level.



 

Really, he sometimes wished that he allowed Dum-E to spray him with the fire extinguisher  more often, because before Tony can blink, the two kids have each other squared up against the wall and Harley has -- what the hell is that? Oh. Huh; upgrades have been made. 

So he wipes off his expression of a dog caught sneaking treats, and stands up, folding his arms over his chest and clearing his throat, one brow arched. 

“ _Clearly_ we need to talk. C’mon, sit. Now,” he snaps his fingers at both of them and points Peter to one chair after the mechanical arm has let go of him, and Harley back to the desk he had been perched on earlier. 

Harley pulls away from the wall, and Tony groans at the dents in the plaster where the Armist Formerly Known as ABB had dug in to allow the leverage to pick up Peter by the back of his suit. As he pulls away, the arm unfolds to one single long line, and then folds up further into the orange backpack slung over his shoulders. Harley still looks more amused than apologetic, and honestly what should he expect? 

Tony eyes the pack that Harley still has on, looking toward Peter, who seems flushed with equal amounts of embarrassment and frustration, with his eyes darting around the labs like he still can’t focus. Tony decides to act. 

“Backpack off.”

“No fucking way.” 

“Watch your fucking mouth. And you — webshooters off. Now.” 

“But—“ 

“Now. Snap snap, both of you kiddos. Disarm.” 

Harley scoffs, but he does slide off his pack as soon as he sees Peter moving to unclasp the black bands from where they wrap around his wrists. Small victories. At least Tony can feel bold enough to assume that they are currently stuck respecting to him more than they are hating each other. 

Harley’s backpack _clunks_ down on the metal table, and Tony’s brows creep up his face for a moment, until he’s passed the web shooters. 

There’s a pained sigh from the southern boy who shoves himself up on the bench, but he’s resting a hand on his pack. At Tony’s look, he raises a brow. “The kid can bench a bus, you think I’m ‘boutta let Abby out of reach?” 

“Abby?” Tony asks, choosing to try and distract from the wariness shared between the teens. 

“You called her ABB. That seemed like a lame name,” Harley replies, patting the orange pack and pressing his fingers into a near-invisible pad on the side. “I made it better. I made _her_ better.”

Piece by piece, the pack unfolds. It contains precisely one thing, which was carefully unloaded first. A white, long, hexagonal looking mechanism -- which Tony immediately swipes up -- before the hinges of the arm began to rearrange themselves. Within moments, the mechanical arm that had once been of Tony’s own design was sitting on the bench and looking _overly_ critical (as critical as a mechanical arm can be) of Peter. Who looked just as critical in his seat. Critical of Tony and Harley, or critical because he looked like he was on the verge of several synchronous breakdowns. 

He turns around the white object eventually, brows furrowed, but he’s got his attention on Peter and Harley too. Harley’s grinning like a jackal and Peter may as well be sweating his costume off now that the initial outburst has faded away. 

Clearing his throat, Tony sets it down -- a conversation for later -- and looks between both of them. “Alright. So, maybe I should have been a little more… clear. With both of you.”  
  
“Ya think?” “Maybe.” 

Dear _god_ , teenagers. 

“Look, that’s in the past. What’s done is done. Harley, Peter. Peter, Harley. Spider-Man, erm… Wait--” There’s a beat, and from the way that Harley’s legs still from where they’d been swinging, he knows what’s coming. “You are _not_ going to call yourself Iron-Kid, or whatever,” Tony intercepted. He tried not to feel too smug about the exaggeratedly crestfallen expression on Harley’s face. 

" _Non dovrebbe chiamarsi altro che stupido_ ,” Peter mutters, rubbing the back of his neck where the mechanical arm had taken hold on his suit and sending off a glare in Harley’s direction. 

“ _Fa' il bravo, in inglese_ ,” Tony shoots back, turning his attention to the droid. There was absolutely zero chance that he would let either of the kids run their mouths when the other couldn’t rebut. Sure, he can tell them to both stop entirely, but he’s not stupid. There’s a better was to stop this. 

So he stands. 

Both teens stare at him, and all Tony does is raise his arms. Peter’s looking petulant, Harley’s frowning, and Tony is… sighing. 

“Look. If you two want to act like toddlers… Then, by all means. Fight it out. Throw a tantrum over your favourite toys. But me? I’m outtie. I am not equipped to be the ruler for your dick measuring contest. So,” he waved a hand, dismissively. He was playing both boys at their own game, putting down their behaviour before it could escalate, but telling them that they _could_ do it -- if they wanted to be sub-par to his standards.

Of course, as soon as he’s out of the room, Tony glances up and mutters, “FRI, make sure they’re behaving,” under his breath. Better safe than sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO SORRY I WENT TO EUROPE FOR TWO MONTHS AND SUFFERED BURNOUT. 
> 
> The Italian is "He shouldn't be calling himself anything but stupid" and then "behave -- in english" courtesy of Alex who I got to meet in Paris and Florence on this trip. 
> 
> Sorry this took a long time. I had most of it done. I may revise this whole fic in a bit, but... TAKE THIS! Love you. Made a tumblr for writing, which is malmignatte.tumblr.com


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